On Sun, 2014-06-15 at 02:34 -0700, Tony Alfrey wrote:
Yes, there was a time when the big selling point of linux was that it would work on a minimal machine. What ever happened to that ethic?
Well I still do email on a PII under SuSE 10.0 and just in case I saved all the RPMs for upgrading and resurrection. I just have to dig for them as my backup disks are a little disorganized. CWSIV -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/28/2014 10:45 PM, Carl Spitzer wrote:
On Sun, 2014-06-15 at 02:34 -0700, Tony Alfrey wrote:
Yes, there was a time when the big selling point of linux was that it would work on a minimal machine. What ever happened to that ethic?
Well I still do email on a PII under SuSE 10.0 and just in case I saved all the RPMs for upgrading and resurrection. I just have to dig for them as my backup disks are a little disorganized.
And I have under my desk a 800MHz single core CPU with 1G of memory (I found some more chips, it used to be 500M) that I upgraded from mageia2 to 12.1. It runs Postfix for outgoing mail, a variety of fetchmail to a local archive and a dovecot server so that the mail can be read by myself and anyone else interested on the LAN. It also runs a BIND9 DNS server and DHCP server. Its headless and is managed by a ssh connection. A second similar machine run a wiki under apache. Its FosWIKI abut I'm thinking of setting up Docuwiki as well. The key here is that these underpowered machines are quite adequate for the tasks they are used for. This is a small department, less than 50 people using the DNS, about 5 using the mail archive and the wiki is an information & 'suggestions box' service as well as a 'documentation/Q&A repository'. -- All serious daring starts from within. - Eudora Welty -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2014-10-29 04:40, Anton Aylward wrote:
The key here is that these underpowered machines are quite adequate for the tasks they are used for. This is a small department, less than 50 people using the DNS, about 5 using the mail archive and the wiki is an information & 'suggestions box' service as well as a 'documentation/Q&A repository'.
Same here. My home server is an old laptop with a Pentium IV, 500 MB, new internal 80 GB hard disk. 32 bits. Missing battery. I simply added to it a big external hard disk via USB, removed the bottom cover, sat it on top of a laptop-table-fan powered from external mains-to-usb adaptor, so that its own fan seldom runs. Yes, of course, disk performance is not brilliant, being on usb. But it does what I need, staying up full time with little power. Being a laptop it is small and self contained. Has keyboard and display in case of need. I don't see a reason to place there a full desktop computer, which I also have but do not use because this one serves better. I might use a small barebones when it dies, or perhaps I'll buy another second hand old lappy. Or get some friend to hand me down a useless piece of crap ;-) What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlRQqkAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WWewCeKSnp7WRwKGfzCm+F1FqoHph8 hF0An31WwDqpFch76DYiaifT0z02ZfPr =bXip -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 29/10/2014 09:50, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
same. that said, old hardware spend often much more power than newer ones jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 2014-10-29 09:55, jdd wrote:
Le 29/10/2014 09:50, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
same.
that said, old hardware spend often much more power than newer ones
Not often with a laptop ;-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)
Op woensdag 29 oktober 2014 10:18:08 schreef Carlos E. R.:
On 2014-10-29 09:55, jdd wrote:
Le 29/10/2014 09:50, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
same.
that said, old hardware spend often much more power than newer ones
Not often with a laptop ;-)
Just bought a new laptop which lasts 5 hours on its battery using openSUSE 13.2 and the external AC to DC convertor (40 W) has half the capacity of my previous laptop (6.5 years old). Still it has more than triple the CPU power of my old laptop, although I never felt the need for more power. -- fr.gr. member openSUSE Freek de Kruijf -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 29/10/2014 10:18, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
On 2014-10-29 09:55, jdd wrote:
Le 29/10/2014 09:50, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
same.
that said, old hardware spend often much more power than newer ones
Not often with a laptop ;-)
yes, it doeas. I have had laptops with 7 A capable alimentation (and using them! - was a Compaq one), when new ones are much smaller 2 or 3 amps jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/29/2014 04:50 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
+1 -- Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters. - Albert Einstein -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/29/2014 04:50 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
+1 I personally would not mind seeing some old architectures dropped say
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Anton Aylward
-- Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters. - Albert Einstein -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
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On 2014-10-30 19:04, Timothy Butterworth wrote:
On 10/29/2014 04:50 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
+1 I personally would not mind seeing some old architectures dropped say
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Anton Aylward <> wrote: like everything below Pentium 4 or Intel Core II Duo as a start then optimizing the 32 bit kernel for the newer processors but at least it is no longer optimized for i386 anymore.
I also would like the i386 target be dropped and switched to the i686 target instead. But. There are some AMD processors that do not support all the instructions of the P-IV (MMS?) and break down. There have been recent reports about that. Then I think that there are some modern low powered CPUs that are 32 bit, being sold in some laptops recently. I saw a post not long ago about one, but we did not clarify fully if it was really 32 bit CPU or if it had some other limitation instead. Like a 32 bit memory path :-? There were doubts, but the OP did not comment back. I have an Intel tablet of unknown (to me) CPU. Maybe it is 32 bit, would not surprise me. In virtualization, it aparently makes sense to provide virtual 32 bit machines instead of 64, even if the host hardware is 64 bit. Apparently they use less resources. But this could use a way more modern variant that the P-IV.
32 bit will eventually go away, I do not know why anyone would want to keep using a P4 with 1GB of Ram when they could upgrade to a much better system at a very low cost like a Core II Duo for example.
Because we already have the hardware and it costs money to replace it!
Old computers do not need to be land fill they can be recycled for the valuable metals they contain.
Oh, yes. In some village in China or Africa, where people wearing paper masks on mouth for /protection/ and nose burn the plastics in open fires, close to a river, to get the metal, and similar low tech and dangerous /recycling/ technologies. It is documented. Please! :-( -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Carlos E. R.
On 2014-10-30 19:04, Timothy Butterworth wrote:
On 10/29/2014 04:50 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
+1 I personally would not mind seeing some old architectures dropped say
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Anton Aylward <> wrote: like everything below Pentium 4 or Intel Core II Duo as a start then optimizing the 32 bit kernel for the newer processors but at least it is no longer optimized for i386 anymore.
I also would like the i386 target be dropped and switched to the i686 target instead.
But.
There are some AMD processors that do not support all the instructions of the P-IV (MMS?) and break down. There have been recent reports about that.
I have seen other distro's drop i386. It should be possible to work with AMD to produce a AMD 32 bit kernel build and bump the intel build up to i686.
Then I think that there are some modern low powered CPUs that are 32 bit, being sold in some laptops recently. I saw a post not long ago about one, but we did not clarify fully if it was really 32 bit CPU or if it had some other limitation instead. Like a 32 bit memory path :-? There were doubts, but the OP did not comment back.
I have an Intel tablet of unknown (to me) CPU. Maybe it is 32 bit, would not surprise me.
Intel Atom CPU's are 32 bit but they have been working on a 64 bit. The Intel Atom processors do support MMS, SSE1-2/3.
In virtualization, it aparently makes sense to provide virtual 32 bit machines instead of 64, even if the host hardware is 64 bit. Apparently they use less resources. But this could use a way more modern variant that the P-IV.
32 bit is only useful in a VM if you are providing the guest 2GB of RAM or less. 64 bit on 2GB or less of RAM is less efficient due to the larger RAM addressing scheme wasting space.
32 bit will eventually go away, I do not know why anyone would want to keep using a P4 with 1GB of Ram when they could upgrade to a much better system at a very low cost like a Core II Duo for example.
Because we already have the hardware and it costs money to replace it!
I have an old IBM Aptiva P1 MMX in the basement with the 17 inch CRT that was purchased with it. It has 1 USB 1.1 port and I think about 512MB of RAM. My $300 ASUS Notebook I am typing on has 4GB of RAM and a Celeron 1.5 GHZ Dual Core. Just because I have the old Aptiva and it does still work does not mean I actually want to use it for anything It is not a Core II Duo 1.8GHZ with 4GB of RAM after all. I know a P4 can still run a modern GNU/Linux distro decently well. I installed some old P4 with openSUSE 12.x versions about two years ago, they were not fast in any way and I had to disable all KDE KWin desktop effects to make them more usable but they did work alright after tweaking them.
Old computers do not need to be land fill they can be recycled for the valuable metals they contain.
Oh, yes. In some village in China or Africa, where people wearing paper masks on mouth for /protection/ and nose burn the plastics in open fires, close to a river, to get the metal, and similar low tech and dangerous /recycling/ technologies.
I was planning to tear apart the Aptiva and take it into the local recycling, obviously taking the tiny parts off of the mother board would be challenging with out a inexpensive soldering iron. Aside from the tin case there is copper in the fans, power supply, old CRT. I do agree that a mechanized system is needed and should be created to rapidly remove and collect all the motherboard components and break them down in a safer way but I guess the tiny amount of gold located in the CPU/GPU currently is not tempting enough at current market price. I also do not know of any use for cooked Silicon other than land fill it can not be ground to dust and reused currently. I am not interested in the money from recycling it just clearing out space as I have other old systems and junk stacking up down there also.
It is documented.
Please! :-(
-- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)
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On Thu, 2014-10-30 at 16:36 -0400, Timothy Butterworth wrote: <snip>
In virtualization, it aparently makes sense to provide virtual 32 bit machines instead of 64, even if the host hardware is 64 bit. Apparently they use less resources. But this could use a way more modern variant that the P-IV.
32 bit is only useful in a VM if you are providing the guest 2GB of RAM or less. 64 bit on 2GB or less of RAM is less efficient due to the larger RAM addressing scheme wasting space.
32 bit will eventually go away, I do not know why anyone would want to keep using a P4 with 1GB of Ram when they could upgrade to a much better system at a very low cost like a Core II Duo for example.
Because we already have the hardware and it costs money to replace it!
Boundries are a bit different Upper limit is about 3GB internal mem. Above that, older systems had to go for PAE. otoh, I have lots of virtual machines with just 512MB or even less. servers without X, don't require much. Hans -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 2014-10-30 21:36, Timothy Butterworth wrote:
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:
But.
There are some AMD processors that do not support all the instructions of the P-IV (MMS?) and break down. There have been recent reports about that.
I have seen other distro's drop i386. It should be possible to work with AMD to produce a AMD 32 bit kernel build and bump the intel build up to i686.
It is not AMD's problem. The distribution would have to make 3 versions of packages: i686-AMD, i686-intel, 64 bit.
I have an Intel tablet of unknown (to me) CPU. Maybe it is 32 bit, would not surprise me.
Intel Atom CPU's are 32 bit but they have been working on a 64 bit. The Intel Atom processors do support MMS, SSE1-2/3.
I have no idea how to query my tablet to tell me its cpu. Maybe a long-press-and-hold on the power button. If it is a 32 bit machine, it doesn't help me that they eventually produce a 64 bit machine: if I want to install Linux there, has to be 32 bit. Till/if I buy different hardware.
In virtualization, it aparently makes sense to provide virtual 32 bit machines instead of 64, even if the host hardware is 64 bit. Apparently they use less resources. But this could use a way more modern variant that the P-IV.
32 bit is only useful in a VM if you are providing the guest 2GB of RAM or less. 64 bit on 2GB or less of RAM is less efficient due to the larger RAM addressing scheme wasting space.
My virtual machines are 500..800 MB. 1 GB top.
I know a P4 can still run a modern GNU/Linux distro decently well. I installed some old P4 with openSUSE 12.x versions about two years ago, they were not fast in any way and I had to disable all KDE KWin desktop effects to make them more usable but they did work alright after tweaking them.
I do not use the desktop on those machines, I use them as servers. No big load, of course, but mine does its job perfectly. Yesterday I found out it has an internal modem that might work, so I can add a fax server to it. Not that I want one... just curious. A computer answering machine does interest me, if I find out how to do it, and if that modem has those capacities. Ah, it runs 13.1. You can do 24*7 mail server, dns, dhcp, p2p, slow downloads (my internet pipe is small, so I need to slowly downloads things over days).
Aside from the tin case there is copper in the fans, power supply, old CRT. I do agree that a mechanized system is needed and should be created to rapidly remove and collect all the motherboard components and break them down in a safer way but I guess the tiny amount of gold located in the CPU/GPU currently is not tempting enough at current market price.
Tell those villagers. That's one of the things they are after. It doesn't matter much if mechanized or not, the issue is that they generate pollution (solvent dumping), and do not use proper protection for themselves
I also do not know of any use for cooked Silicon other than land fill it can not be ground to dust and reused currently.
Silicon itself is inert - it is made out from purified sand, after all :-p
I am not interested in the money from recycling it just clearing out space as I have other old systems and junk stacking up down there also.
Understandable - but it just instead fills up space in Africa or elsewhere, destroying nature. You probably can find the reports in youtube. In Europe we pay a tax on everything to cover recycling costs, but instead they ship the garbage, in containers or whatever, to Africa. It is a big business. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)
Carlos E. R. composed on 2014-10-30 19:20 (UTC+0100):
I also would like the i386 target be dropped and switched to the i686 target instead.
But.
There are some AMD processors that do not support all the instructions of the P-IV (MMS?) and break down. There have been recent reports about that.
Then I think that there are some modern low powered CPUs that are 32 bit, being sold in some laptops recently. I saw a post not long ago about one, but we did not clarify fully if it was really 32 bit CPU or if it had some other limitation instead. Like a 32 bit memory path :-? There were doubts, but the OP did not comment back.
Lots of info on the subject of CPU types and instructions in the QT bug denying request to revert enabling by default of sse2: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-35430 According to a comment there, no 32 bit AMD CPU supports sse2. That means without disabling sse2, the only supported antiques are those from Intel, and naming the arch i586[1] or 32-bit amounts very unfortunate marketing if not outright lie. [1] http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.1/repo/oss/suse/i586/ -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 30/10/2014 19:04, Timothy Butterworth a écrit :
32 bit will eventually go away, I do not know why anyone would want to keep using a P4 with 1GB of Ram when they could upgrade to a much better system at a very low cost like a Core II Duo for example.
don't fix what is working... my linux user group have more than 10 such computers running perfectly and no reason to upgrade (such harware we have for free now). We get only marginally 64 bits computers jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Op dinsdag 28 oktober 2014 23:40:49 schreef Anton Aylward:
The key here is that these underpowered machines are quite adequate for the tasks they are used for. This is a small department, less than 50 people using the DNS, about 5 using the mail archive and the wiki is an information & 'suggestions box' service as well as a 'documentation/Q&A repository'.
Same here, but I use a Raspberry Pi with openSUSE 13.1 with a web server, an email server, and an IMAP server, a 16 GB SD card and an external USB disk. Really low power (max 8 W). It runs headless using ssh for maintenance and backup. -- fr.gr. member openSUSE Freek de Kruijf -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 29/10/2014 03:45, Carl Spitzer a écrit :
On Sun, 2014-06-15 at 02:34 -0700, Tony Alfrey wrote:
Yes, there was a time when the big selling point of linux was that it would work on a minimal machine. What ever happened to that ethic?
Well I still do email on a PII under SuSE 10.0 and just in case I saved all the RPMs for upgrading and resurrection. I just have to dig for them as my backup disks are a little disorganized.
CWSIV
not tested on PII, but 13.1 installs very well on 10 years old machines with 512Mb ram jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (9)
-
Anton Aylward -
Carl Spitzer -
Carlos E. R. -
Carlos E. R. -
Felix Miata -
Freek de Kruijf -
Hans Witvliet -
jdd -
Timothy Butterworth